Riding my bicycle around the Dutch polder, walking through misty field, meditation, mountain climbing, organic (bio) food, loving America from a distance (and hanging out with Americans in Europe, though not exclusively... that's kind of weird), culture building, community building, activism, radical marching bands (I'd love to be a flag girl some day), mangling foreign languages, going to the movies, chopping wood in a dress (oh yeah, there are pictures). Japan. Man, Japan is awesome, if completely unsustainable. But then I'm drawn to unsustainable things (see my secret love of Los Angeles).
Ira Glass. Chris Walla. Other people.
There has never been a more perfect movie star than Gene Kelly. We're all just walking in his footsteps. Or Audrey Hepburn, the way that she would just look at the screen, the slight pout in her lips, the fire in her eyes. I saw "Roman Holiday" in Tokyo, with Japanese subtitles; before the film they ran a commercial for the Audrey Hepburn credit card and I thought to myself, "this is the world that we all should be living in".
Almost everything I know about filmmaking I learned from "Project Greenlight". It's amazing what you can pick up if you're really paying attention. One thing they didn't cover? You shouldn't shoot for an extended period of time on railroad tracks in the middle of a heat wave. Because you'll probably end up frying your camera. Which is bad.
Is it embarassing to admit how much I love Jonathan Safran Foer? Is that a cliche? He writes books the way that we all should be writing books, recognizing that the act of reading the book is as much a part of the writing as the story and the characters and everything else. He gets that.
People who make their own independent culture, throw their own film screenings, host concerts in their living room (and, even better, don't charge money to get in). People who compost, and fix bicycles, and re-use shopping bags. People who love other people, and let themselves be loved, and just walk through life with an openness and a graciousness, and offer that to others. People who offer up their homes for couch surfing . People who do something that is very frightening to them, whatever that might be. People who are the change they wish to see.